1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of distributed authoring systems, and more particularly pertains to the implementing of authoring controls within the authoring system. Moreover, the invention is directed to providing the authoring system with a mechanism for the creating of customizable control structures for an access control engine which is adapted to select criteria to provide system access to selective authors or users.
In essence, authoring systems, which may also be known as authoring tools or authorware in technological and commercial applications, may be programs existing in rag hypertext and multimedia applications. Pursuant to more sophisticated applications, in internet, on-line or CD-ROM programs, the authoring systems may be scripting language or graphics elements, or may even represent a mixture of textual (teaching tools, printed works and the like) material, graphical representations, audio data and numerous, practically unlimited types of objects or programs. These authorizing systems are ordinarily developed and designed by authors who define the relationships of the foregoing aspects with each other, and sequencing the programs in an appropriate order for data storage.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
In the present state of the technology and industry, authoring systems are adapted to control authoring access, generally to an authoring system utilizing various control parameters such as check-in/check-out, access control lists, profiles and predefined roles which are assigned to various authors of the system.
In various of the presently developed and known authoring systems, the access control mechanisms which facilitate access to the authoring system are specified or predefined by the system itself; whereas, other authoring systems do not provide access control systems or similar arrangements.
In order to obviate and overcome the limitations encountered in present authoring systems, a primary aspect of the present invention resides in the provision of an improved authoring systems, in which a build mechanism directs the access control engine to create, modify or delete access control structures thereby implementing authoring control. Each author""s authority is controlled by the roles of which they are a member. Each role is associated with attributes, values and logic used during actual authoring to control content selection and how the selected content is displayed. Using the logic, attributes and values, authoring control can be tied more closely to the actual content, unlike other role based systems.
The build mechanism defines new roles, including associated attributes, logic and values, as well as associating attributes and logic to specific display components The roles will be used by other parts of the authoring system to control the selection and display of content. In cases where an author has the authority to modify roles they can determine what functionality other authors can have, including their own. Proper selection of logic can allow multiple authors to function simultaneously in the system at the same time.
The build mechanism directs the access control engine to modify an access control table for the purpose of defining the role""s authoring ability. Each record in the access control table contains a role and its associated attributes, logic and values, as well as a list of logic controlled display components. Each record also contains the permissions the role""s members will have on the content meeting the selection criteria. Each record defines a role (authoring ability) that will be used to select a subset of content and grant permission that determine how the selected content can be modified.
The build mechanism also directs the access control engine to modify the display components table for the purpose of determining what visual components will be use to display selected content. Each record in the display component table contains an attribute whose values will be checked and a visual display component whose format will be determined by those values.
In essence, the authoring system utilizes different parameters or criteria in order to provide reader or author (user) access thereto. Basically, these parameters or criteria include:
a) Userid (User identification)xe2x80x94which is designed to uniquely identify a user or numbers of users intending to gain permission for access to the authoring system;
b) Active flagxe2x80x94providing for indication that a particular user is logged into the authoring system;
c) Rolexe2x80x94is utilized to group users by related functionality, which is implemented by attributes, logic and values, as defined hereinbelow;
d) Attributexe2x80x94is a named field which is associated with content, display components, and/other system elements; and is utilized to tag or impart a set of values with a specific meaning or meanings;
e) Logicxe2x80x94utilizes boolean logic in order to test a given value against the value of a corresponding attribute in content, display component and/or other system element;
f) Valuexe2x80x94defines a constant which is utilized in tabled logic, which is compared with corresponding constants which are assigned to content, display component or system element attributes;
g) Choice componentsxe2x80x94defines a list of that display component or those display components available to a role for both selection and display mechanisms, and which ties specific display logic to content attributes;
h) Which display componentxe2x80x94list of which particular set of logic is to be used against the attribute in the display mechanism;
i) Permissionsxe2x80x94to implement the xe2x80x9caccess authority of the systemxe2x80x9d for a specific role as set forth in c) hereinabove.
The foregoing parameters or criteria are employed in that the access control engine has the build mechanism providing customized control structures which may be created, modified or deleted for implementing a desired authoring control. Pursuant to the invention the customized control structures resolve access control or privileges in the authoring system, utilizing information from both an active user table and an access control structure table. In that instance, the roles are a membership structure utilized to group common functionality and to tie logic to attributes and values. Thus, the roles set forth in an access control table eliminate the need for author profiles in the authoring system, and by introducing logic and display components in the access control engine it is possible to obviate the need for having to execute logic subsequently, as do databases with their views. In the present authoring system, there is no distinction between authors and readers, and a person designated to multiple roles is imparted the combined functionality of all of the roles. Hereby, functionality is defined by the attributes, logic and values, and wherein every access is conveyed to the access control engine, imparting the authoring system with the ability to dynamically reflect changes in the 33 system.
This invention is an improved system for customizing a shared authoring interface by using roles, attributes and logic. It provides a flexible, dynamic authoring interface where changes by a primary author to a secondary author""s privileges are immediately reflected in a modified authoring interface. This allows distributed authors, for example, students and faculty working on a project via networked personal electronic writing tablets, parents and children exchanging notes on an electronic home bulletin board, or writers collaborating via the Internet on a book to immediately and dynamically reflect authoring privileges and functionality in the same interface. This dynamically updated interface controls which author can do what to which section of a document, thus reducing the editorial resources required to control document changes and decreasing the cycle time to produce a series of documents.
This invention improves upon typical shared authoring systems by using roles, attributes and logic to dynamically customize the authoring interface seamlessly as changes are made in authoring privileges. It also provides enhanced capability to customize authoring interfaces beyond the few predefined graphical user interfaces typically provided by most authoring systems.
Most other systems have few predefined authoring privileges without the ability to create a number of customized privileges. Systems that allow the creation of customized authoring privileges don""t have a dynamic interface using roles, attributes and logic to the graphical user interface seen by the authors with different privileges.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a access novel mechanism for building access control structures for authoring systems.
A further object of the present invention resides in the provision of a novel build mechanism for creating customizable control structures for the access control engine adapted to implement controls within an authoring system.